“Put an egg on it” has become something of a culinary cliche. But cliches exist for a reason, and I am telling you, putting an egg on your pizza is worth your time and anyone else’s you want to share pizza with.

But there’s an art to delivering pizza hot and with an oozing yolk on top, and my early attempts weren’t promising. In most cases, the egg was overcooked. Partially baking the dough first didn’t help; in some cases, I overcooked the dough and in others, my "over-easy" eggs turned out hard boiled!

As it turns out, redemption came by way of an immersion circulator (readily available online; I like the one made by Sansaire and Anova), which is a one-stop appliance for all of your sous vide needs. Sous vide (pronounced sue-veed, in your Frenchiest accent) is a method of preparing a food in a temperature-controlled water bath. By preparing an egg sous vide-style, I could simply crack it on top of my finished pizza for a reliably oozing yolk every time.

While it’s possible to do without serious machinery, once you start making food sous vide you’ll become addicted to the flavor and quality, so you may find that you definitely get what you pay for if you shell out a few hundred bucks for an immersion circulator. I make sous vide eggs almost weekly; they’re addictive. If you don't want pizza, try them on toast!

Stretch your dough into a 12 inch circle (oblong or oval is fine). Lightly flour your peel and place the dough on top.

Set the oven to BROIL.

Evenly distribute the fresh mozzarella and bacon across the top of the pizza, leaving about 1 inch around the perimeter for the crust.

Use a generously floured pizza peel to launch your pizza onto the Baking Steel and bake under the broiler for 2 minutes.

After 2 minutes, open the oven and use your pizza peel to give the pizza a 180-degree turn. Turn off the broil setting but keep the oven at its highest temperature, and continue cooking for another 1-2 minutes, or until the bacon is cooked and the cheese has attained your desired brownness.

Use your pizza peel to remove the pie from the oven. Crack your sous vide eggs into a bowl and drain any excess liquid with a fine mesh strainer. Place the eggs on top of your pizza and season with sea salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle chopped parsley over the whole thing. Slice and serve.

Sous Vide Eggs

This easy method will work with most immersion circulators.

1. Set your immersion circulator to 64 C.

2. Once the water has preaheated, use a spoon to carefully place the eggs in the water bath.

3. Allow eggs to cook in the water bath for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes in the water bath, remove and shock them with cold water to stop the cooking process. Once cool enough to touch, you can use the eggs immediately, or store in the fridge until ready to use. They’ll keep for 4-5 days.

Recipe note:

As an alternative to sous vide eggs, try poaching your eggs. Any cooking method will work, as long as your egg is cooked and ready for topping ahead of time.